of the moon
by darsdars
Summary: In a whirlwind of chaos and this mistreatment of power, of the moon follows ten teenagers on their journey after each of them awaken in the same government funded facility dedicated to human experimentation. The goal of the facility- called Whitmarsh Testing - is to unlock more than 10% of the human brain. If the kids are just pawns, what happens when they aren't needed?


stage five

(gavin)

Once, not long ago, Gavin Barker was a completely normal boy with a tendency to daydream and a bad habit of mumbling when he talked. Mostly, he was still the same boy, except now he only got to see the white walls of sterile rooms and the faces of those like him and the faces of those who put him where he was. He did not want to be there. He wanted to be home.

But there was no way for him to leave.

One minute he was studying for his Spanish final and the next, he was a prisoner of a place called Whitmarsh Testing. It was unknown to the public, apparently, and specialized in pushing the boundaries of human capabilities in the hope of one day achieving the unachievable: power, invincibility, _immortality._

Here was the kick: all- well, all he had met- of the patients in the facility were there against their will. All communications were blocked and society was led to believe each and every person who got to trade in their normal lives for a surgical gown and tasteless food had simply run away: vanished into the night, never to return.

Why did they never return? Gavin strongly believed it was because Whitmarsh Testing had never had a completely successful outcome. Most patients probably died and those who did live were probably just too changed, too little human, to ever be deemed safe to release back into society.

And that was Gavin Barker's future too, it seemed.

They weren't allowed to leave, but they _were_ allowed to interact with other patients. In fact, they were encouraged to. Gavin had learned early on that it was easier to to do what the officials said because their punishments were…. unorthodox, to say the least.

Currently, Gavin walked down the halls of level thirteen of the facility with Izzy Tanaka in tow. She was a frail girl with thick short hair and quick wit and, frankly, she was his closest friend in the program. She was in Stage Four of her development - the resting stage after the first injection. Gavin wasn't entirely sure what it was they gave the patients but it was some kind of mind enhancer. It made things clearer and easier to understand, but also made things like emotions seem harder to experience. Izzy was scheduled to do her second round of testing that day to see if her intellect had improved any since her arrival nearly five months ago. Gavin, like Izzy, was in his fourth stage of development, but that was going to change in a mere hour or so.

He was the first patient of the batch and the officials liked to keep the stages quiet which made him think that maybe there was a stage included at one point that said something along the lines of " _Stage Ten: you die! Sorry!_ "

Stage Five. He had survived the first four. He had been removed from society and taught that this was his new home, he had taken test after test, the scores of which he didn't even get to know. He had survived his first injection, a feat that surprised several of the officials which was kind of depressing, like they all half-expected the drug to kill him. He had retaken his tests and he must have improved because there he was. Stage Five.

"I'm just saying that literally no matter how this goes, my scores will have to improve," Izzy explained, "In the first round I was still a total basket case, remember?" It was true, to be fair. The trick Gavin had learned about doing what the officials said hadn't been quite as obvious to some of the other patients and certainly not to Izzy, who refused to accept that she was no longer Izzy Tanaka: Smartest girl in her grade with the promise of a full ride to Harvard law in the fall. She refused to accept that she had been reduced to, what? Izzy Tanaka: Patient #3 in an inhumane testing facility controlled by the government and kept secret from the public. So she was punished.

She hadn't ever told Gavin what they did to her but whatever it was, it left her shaken for weeks. She didn't speak for days and when she finally did, it was only in quiet incomplete phrases that didn't quite match the speed of the conversation:

(" _Have you eaten today, Izzy?_ "

" _The tacos here smell funny, huh?"_

" _Are you feeling okay?"_

" _Because my head hurts.")_

It was easy enough to understand her with some concentration, but it had taken her quite some time to come around. She was still a bit off when she was deemed well enough to enter Stage Two, so surely her scores had suffered.

"Well, good luck." he said, touching her arm as they stopped in front of a large door made of clouded glass. "You've got this." She offered him a small smile and in an instant she was gone and he stood alone in the hallway.

He stared at his reflection in the door. The gown reminded him of the tv shows he had watched where people would turn around and reveal their bare asses to the crowds because it was the same shade of pale blue and it stopped at an awkward place between his lower thigh and his knee that made his legs look like those of a cricket. It didn't, however, fasten in the back. Instead, it was slipped on almost like an over-sized shirt, except it wasn't nearly as comfortable.

A large mop of brown curls sat on his head and mossy green eyes glared back at him. He held his reflection's gaze for a moment longer until he was interrupted by the intercom. " _Patient One to Floor #3. Patient One to Floor #3."_ said a vaguely robotic-sounding woman's voice. He sucked his teeth.

Show time.

The elevator ride down ten floors took a lot less time when he dreaded what waited for him upon arrival, he realized. When the doors opened, he could have just been in a normal hospital. People wearing lab coats went on about their days with clipboards in their hands. All of them seemed to be in a hurry, like that day might have been the day they stopped ruining innocent lives and began to save them. There was even a large wooden barrier-desk at the end of the hall, where Nurse Tilley, a super positive, vaguely creepy woman sat, digging through paperwork with wide eyes and a plastic smile. She was short and mousy, with short shoulder-length orange hair and pink lip gloss.

"Ah, Mr. Barker!" she said when he approached the desk, but Gavin noticed she never even looked up from the papers she studied. "Uh, I'm supposed t-"

"I know, silly! I was the one that asked Wilma to call for you! Do you know what today is?" she asked, finally looking up at him. "The beginning of Stage Five!" she answered, notably: before Gavin even had a chance to. "Oh, I really hope you pull through. We have _such_ high hopes this time around!"

"Yeah…" he replied with his eyebrows squinched together. "Me too?" Nurse Tilley smiled warmly at him, too warmly for the situation. "Okay, the doctors would like to speak to you before we begin." she said, tapping the papers on her desk and standing. "Please follow me."

Gavin noticed she walked with a spring in her step as if she wasn't aware she worked in a human-experimentation lab and he was mindlessly annoyed by it. She knew what this was. She knew more than him or any of the patients. She knew he was brought there to die a death that would go unnoticed, but she walked as if she were frolicking through a field of daisies.

It was repulsive.

"Go on in," she said, ushering him through a large wooden door. It closed behind him with a sort of finality and intimidation. Yes, this was where the bosses worked, wasn't it?

The room was huge. Luxurious decorative items lined the walls. One wall was completely glass and it was the first time he had seen a window since he had gotten there. For a moment, he saw huge waves rolling on the surface of a gray-black ocean, but the next, the windows darkened into a solid sheet of black. His gaze flicked from the windows to the other people occupying the room.

Sitting behind a desk of dark, polished wood was a woman with coffee-colored skin and eyes as golden as sunlight. Her hair was shaved so that only about an inch of black hair jutted out from her scalp. She was in her early fifties, he guessed, and was obviously more in charge than the man who leaned against the wall behind her: a disheveled man with his shirt half-untucked and his hair a mess.

"Mr. Barker," said the woman in a clear, calm voice that somehow terrified him. "Please have a seat." He obeyed. "We understand that today is the start of your next Stage, is that so?" He nodded. "That's what I have been told." She smiled a humorless smile and flipped open a file.

From it, she pulled out a stack of papers. She sifted through them for a moment and Gavin couldn't help glancing down and. That handwriting… He knew that handwriting. It was-

"Your test scores," the woman said, taking notice in his curiosity and flashing a look that implied she was not impressed by it. "They have improved. _Vastly_ improved." He frowned. "Is that… Is that bad?" For the first time since he had entered, the woman appeared to be less-than-murderous.

"Yes, Mr. Barker. It is very, very good." she allowed a moment of silence, then continued. "Thus far, our studies on the levels of human brain activity haven't exactly been _fruitful._ Quite honestly, some of our staff were beginning to question our motifs here at Whitmarsh." The man doctor behind her shifted and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked almost as if he wanted to say something but stopped himself at the last second. "Are you aware that humans can only access about 10% of their brains, Mr. Barker?" He got the feeling it was a rhetorical question, so he only tried his hardest to keep the woman's gaze. "We strongly believe here at Whitmarsh that we are on the verge of finding a way to allow humans to access more than 10%. 20%, 50% if our numbers are correct."

Gavin bit his bottom lip. Things made a little more sense now, at least. "So the others and I are just… pawns?" The man doctor surged forward. "Of course not. You are key to our research! Without you-" he was interrupted by the woman. "That is enough, !" faded back into the background without saying anything else.

"What was trying to say was that the test subjects are a necessary part of the development. _You_ were necessary to the development: all of you were."

Suddenly, Gavin was not afraid of her.

"So all of the people- sorry, _children_ you've murdered, where they a necessary part of the development too?" She pursed her lip and clicked her nails against the surface of the desk. After a moment, she spoke. "Yes."

He felt fury rattle his bones and shake his core. "That is sickening! And if I die, if the others die, that's all we'll be as well? _Necessary sacrifices_ for your stupid science experiment?!" She raised her voice to match his. "We have high hopes that you, nor the others, will die, Mr. Barker! The results thus far have been phenomenal and I'll have you know that, had those before you not died, it may have been _you_ who died instead! The drug is _working_ this time!" He scoffed. "And what makes you so sure?"

She leaned over the desk so that she could say what she had to say with complete clarity:

"Because, Mr. Barker. No patient has lived as long as you have."


End file.
